Unnatural Fire by Fidelis Morgan – I picked this one up and enjoyed it though I didn’t love it like a long lost rich relative. See posted review.

Swept Off Her Feet by Hester Browne – This one hit all the right notes for me and makes me determined to see what else this author has already out there. Second or maybe third generation Chick Lit style with Scottish reeling! See posted review.

A Catered Affair by Sue Margolis – A bit different in story timeline than I was expecting and not in a good way. The heroine also didn’t work for me until too late to believe her sudden change. Full review to follow.

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Cafe du Jour by Lillian Darcy – I think this will be a love it or leave it book for most. The writing style and “feel” of the book worked for me as one woman’s exploration of her life and her sister’s recovery from a horrific road accident. Though a romance is promised, it comes way at the end and felt like a tack on to me. Full review to follow.

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Make Me Believe by Crystal Jordan – hot hair dresser is herded together with hot firefighter by paranormal forces for lots of hot sex. My interest in the story was to see how the author would get two romance gun shy characters together. With lots of sex, that’s how. Full Review to follow.

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*****

Confetti – this is a mockumentary of themed weddings and the need for couples to have that unique wedding that sets them apart from all others. Sometimes the simplest weddings are the best. I think this would be enjoyed by people who’ve liked “Waiting for Guffman” or “Best in Show.” I saw lots of UK actors I like and had a great time. Warning – one of the couples practice “naturalism” and there’s tons of full frontal here.

Sanjuro – I went ahead and changed my mind, as I warned I do, and watched this as my next Kurosawa film. Though I’d read how much more of a comedy this is than Yojimbo, I actually found it a bit darker in the plot and ending. In Yojimbo, both sides the ronin was playing off each other were bad which made him the only good guy and I didn’t feel that it would be wrong for either side to lose. Here the sides were good vs evil and a family was at stake. The final fight only brought home the wise words the older woman stated earlier in the film which I will paraphrase as: powerful warriors need to be careful as when they unleash their killing skills, people die.

Mrs Miniver – Someone – forgive me I can’t recall who or on what Friday Movie thread – recommended I try this one. I think this one stands as a testament to how life was in England at the time – boy have things changed – and as an example of the “chin up, we can do it” type of films being made to lift spirits and keep the home front bravely supporting the troops during WWII. It also shows its age and not in a good way at times.

The Harmonists – this is about an six man all male singing group in Germany during the turbulent late 1920s and early 1930s. Half the group is Jewish so we see how the changing politics affected the country through their experiences. It has lovely period costumes, lots of music (I think original recordings were used) but the film has the feel of being almost totally shot on a soundstage which gave it a very artificial feel to me.

I’ll be honest and say that I didn’t expect I’d like this movie. Drew Barrymore is an actress who works for me about 50:50 while Adam Sandler is someone I’ll dive for the remote to change the channel away from. But the comments about the movie in the “Ever After” thread made me shrug my shoulders and say “why not?”

Robbie Hart (Adam Sandler) has dreams of becoming a songwriter but somewhere along the way, his gigs as a wedding singer to make extra cash turned into what he does for a living. He does it well but it’s not a chick magnet profession. Julia (Drew Barrymore) is a waitress he meets at some of the weddings they both work at and the two exchange small talk and discuss their own upcoming nuptials.

But when Robbie is stood up at the altar, it’s Julia who tries to bring him out of his funk by asking him to help her plan her wedding to a slick Wall Street bond man. As they test cakes, check out dresses and bargain down photographers they begin to have feelings for each other. But will Robbie get the courage to tell Julia how he feels for her – and what a schmuck her fiance is – before it’s too late?

I hadn’t realized that this movie is an homage to the 1980s. Oh, the fashions that I remember: trampy Madonna lace gloves, workout wear, RELAX t-shirts, gelled hair that could withstand a wind tunnel, Miami Vice pastels and Michael Jackson’s red jacket – it’s all there and had me laughing. The music, however, is what takes the cake and makes the film. It not only sets the 80s mood but the lyrics are spot on for the feel and needs of the scene they’re used for. And they even got Billy Idol and a Boy George imitator!

Drew Barrymore is perfect as the perky “girl next door” type. She’s sweet without being saccharine and manages not to come off as too much of a chump for not having seen the truth of her fiance. Matthew Glave as fiance Glenn is a good mix of too suave player whose eyes are still roving but who doesn’t think he’s doing anything wrong. After all, he’s doing what he thinks he has to and marrying Julia, right?

There are lots of wonderful secondary characters played by fabulous actors including Steve Buscemi, Allen Covert, Frank Sivero, Ellen Albertini Dow and Christine Taylor. You might not immediately know their names but the faces will be familiar and they do well with their parts.

But the true surprise for me is Adam Sandler’s performance. I like Robbie Hart. I want him to pull himself together, realize what a putz Glenn is and a treasure Julia is and make everything right at the end. And when he does, it’s fabulous. The last scenes on the plane with the first class conspiracy to get these two together is a scream plus the song Robbie sings to Julia makes me smile as well as laugh.

I’m glad I gave this one a shot since up til now, I’d avoided it like the plague. Sure, it’s a bit cheesy and campy and feel good but it doesn’t make fun of anyone unlike so many romantic comedies that must make either the hero or heroine – or both – look like fools. And the way Sandler and Barrymore play their characters, I truly can see them growing old with each other and singing at their 50th Anniversary. B-

~Jayne

I’ve read that Americans are more interested in British royal weddings than the Brits. Well, the bloom might be off the rose for me after watching Chuck + Di and Andrew + Fergie make hashes of their marriages but I do wish the latest young royal and his bride better luck. At least they’ve got some examples of what not to do. Anyway, when Harlequin announced a series of novellas involving past royal weddings as a way to celebrate this new one, I took a look.

I cherry picked 3 of the possible 7 short stories. The ones I skipped were mainly because some of the blurbs made it sound as if the story concentrated on royal couples I knew ultimately had terrible marriages.

A Princely Dilemma – Elizabeth Rolls

The Prince of Wales detests his German bride to be Princess Caroline and it’s up to the newly married Duke and Duchess of Severn to coax them both into behaving like adults instead of spoiled brats. The problem is that the Duke and Duchess are also in an arranged marriage which isn’t going well. Will they discover love amidst the royal feuding?

I enjoyed the humor in this one. The hero, Severn, and Malmesbury discussing Prinny (who I couldn’t help but picture as REG had played him). “He is fat.” Also the Beaulieu family dinner party is a hoot with Severn’s firecracker sister and brother in law taking the piss out of the overbearing and condescending Dowager Duchess for Linnet.

I’m afraid though that I didn’t really get what Severn saw in Linnet – yes, he loves her little drab bird self but why? We know she’s sweet but he didn’t seem to know a great deal about her beyond that she reads. That she knows several languages has escaped him as well as what her real name is. It was an “all of a sudden” he’s in lurve and mega hot for her bod type thing. I thought they were the sweetest couple but I wanted to see more beyond his physical attraction to her. B-

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Princess Charlotte’s Choice – Ann Lethbridge

Prinny’s daughter Princess Charlotte is hoping to marry Prince Leopold. Charlotte’s lady in waiting Lady Isabelle is hoping to avoid Leopold’s boon companion Count Nikkolae Grazinsky who sweet talked Isabelle into falling for him two years ago then walked away. Can he convince her of his true and honorable intentions?

It’s nice to learn something about poor Princess Charlotte and her beloved Leopold even if I knew the tragic end that story would lead to. Isabelle and Nikki – again it’s insta love. Isabelle gives her heart to Nikki then the Big Mis rears its ugly head and she doesn’t get that he walks away because he’s poor. Of course he never says anything either so why should she? Then they meet and she thinks he’s mocking her so she seeks him out, in the stable by herself, to tell him to leave her alone. Is she worried about her rep which she says he already damaged? Apparently not. I’m as appalled as Nikki and wondering where her wits are. Then he does the strong arm thing and totally arranges her future without a by-your-leave. Shades of Barbara Cartland here. C

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The Problem with Josephine – Lucy Ashford

Seamstress Sophie is on a mission. She needs to find a painter to redo the scattered images of divorced former Empress Josephine as Napoleon prepares for his gala marriage to Marie-Louise of Austria. Rakish painter Jacques agrees but for the price of one kiss for each hour he works. Will they find love amidst the paint fumes?

I’m amazed at the number of romance tropes that make into this short, short story. Let’s see, there’s the heroine who must valiantly and at the last minute cover for daddy’s failings and shortsightedness in not using the money given to him to fix these paintings but rather spending it on other restorations. The prim heroine falls for and gives it up to a poor starving artist for the proverbial one night of love. Of course hero is actually someone in disguise. Oh, why can’t we have a real poor starving artist hero? Of course heroine knows he’s a rake, practiced flirt, charmer but she can’t help busting out of her buttoned up persona as she swoons from his masterful kisses. True love in 7 evenings and marriage to an aristo? Sure, why not. C-

The short stories are easy to read, quick little aperitifs. But while aperitifs are fine when you know the main courses are still to come, here they did leave me wanting. There’s too much reliance on quick tropes and easy plot short cuts. However with the limited word count, that’s probably the best I could expect and though the price is lower than regular books, it’s still a little high for what I got.

~Jayne

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I mentioned on Twitter that I wanted to try out more Harlequin Superromance authors and Larissa Ione suggested your books. I am so glad for the recommendation.

Baby Makes Three is not a book I would have bought through ordinary browsing. Generally I am not a fan of books with babies, featuring babies, mentioning babies, babies on the cover. I think you get the picture. However, it features reunited lovers and I do love a good reunited lover story.

Gabe Mitchell spent fifteen years in the New York restaurant scene and is now throwing all of his savings into creating a destination inn in the Hudson River Valley. The problem is that he doesn’t have a chef. No one seems to want to move into the backwater. Gabe has a wedding to cater or the Riverview Inn will be dead before it even gets a chance to have its first Zagat review.

Gabe’s helpful brother tells him to contact Alice. “Alice had never, ever been the solution to a problem. She was the genesis of trouble, the spring from which any disaster in his life emerged.” Alice is Gabe’s ex wife.

Alice isn’t the superstar that she was when she and Gabe parted. The last miscarriage, the failure of her marriage, and then trusting the wrong people in business led Alice from the chef and owner of a New York City restaurant to the head line chef of a Johnny O franchise in Albany. She’s at a pretty low point, both personally and professionally, when Gabe finds her to offer her a job at his Inn. Alice agrees to cover the impending wedding and the opening of Riverview Inn until Gabe can find a permanent chef.

It’s pretty clear early on that Alice and Gabe didn’t fall out of love with each other, but that they could no longer live with each other. Alice’s desperate need to have a child and Gabe’s preference to walk away than to fight drove them apart. In the glimpses that we get of their marriage, the end days were no picnic. They both said horrible, painful things to one another and their divorce seemed inevitable.

The story is then about how the two of them heal enough to come together again. How Gabe learns that sometimes you have to dig in and fight for what you want and Alice learns that Gabe just needed to know that he was enough to fill her heart.

Weaving in and out of the main story line was that of Gabe’s father Patrick and Gabe’s mother who had ostensibly abandoned them when Gabe was a child. Patrick and Gabe’s mother have been writing to each other and now she wants to come and reconnect with Gabe and Max (Gabe’s brother). Gabe and Max have very strong, negative feelings about that.

In this marriage, both Gabe and Alice were at fault. Gabe refused to talk about the multiple miscarriages. It was easier to move forward than dwell on the pain. Gabe has moving forward down to perfection. Alice wanted babies, it seemed, more than anything else. She wouldn’t even consider adoption. She also needed someone to grieve with her for the loss of their babies.

Forced together for two months, Gabe and Alice can’t ignore their feelings for each other but while Alice is ready to change and open her heart to Gabe, Gabe doesn’t want to see that Alice has changed. He just wants to move forward. He tries to date a local farmer. He tries to bed Alice and get her out of his system. He tries to ignore and bottle up all the emotion that Alice, his loss, their loss brings.

Everything about the setup is beautiful. It’s like the dream we had a million years ago. Better even than that. Kisses at dusk, troubled kids working out their prolbems in the kitchen, weddings being planned — there was nothing he could ask for that would be better. Except…if his chef wasn’t Alice. If his blood didn’t hum for his ex-wife. If it was another woman with whom these two months could actually build into something more.”

Gabe really wanted a family too. The attraction of the local farmer is not just that she’s good looking and interested in the same things as he is, but that she has an adorable daughter. A daughter that could have been Gabe’s.

If I had quibbles with this story it was how easily I think Alice’s alcoholism was glossed over. I thought it would play a larger part of Alice’s character arc, but it didn’t seem to have the impact I was expecting. I thought Gabe and Alice were very authentically drawn.

Strong B for me.

Best regards,

Jane

This book can be purchased at Amazon or in ebook format from Sony or other etailers.

Emily Saunders was in Elk Crossing for “a wedding she didn’t want to attend with far too many of her family and friends asking nosy questions about her own continuing single status” when her hotel becomes infested with bed bugs. Another traveler at the hotel is Jonah Betts playing in his Old Timers Hockey League playoffs which is usually one of the highlights of his year.

The two get the choice of staying in the last hotel room complete with a leaky ceiling. Emily tries to throw out any number of ideas that can resolve the double booking problem including a sleeping bag on the floor.

Jonah was a pretty easy going guy, but this was going too far. He had his team to think. “I have an important day tomorrow,” he told her. “I need my sleep. You bed down on the lobby floor.”

She stalked right up to him, nose to his collarbone. Their lack of equality in the height department seemed to aggravate her even more. “I have an important day tomorrow, too.”

“I’m competing in a hockey tournament.”

“I’m a bridesmaid in a wedding.”

“My condolences.”

It’s not like Jonah doesn’t find her attractive. He does, but he’s more interested in trying to get a bed for the weekend than stirring up any chemistry between the two. He even goes so far as to promise that he won’t make a pass at Emily in hopes that she’ll agree to the simple solution of sharing the hotel room. Finally, realizing that it’s either sharing this one room with this stranger who proclaims he is a cop or going to stay with her relatives, Emily caves.

She turned back to him, he hair swinging in a silky curtain. “I carry mace. I’ll be sleeping with it under my pillow.”

“Hey, it’s got to be better to share a room with me than bedbugs.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

Despite Jonah’s hockey games and Emily’s wedding duties, they end up spending quite a bit of time with each other. Jonah, with the clarity of an outsider, sees how Emily allows her family to take advantage of her. She’s single, after all, and in need of fixing with a surplus of time to do a dozen tasks from picking up the china to handwriting the place cards. Emily, despite her success as part owner of a wellness clinic, always feels diminished when she is home.

I liked that the attraction between Jonah and Emily built upon their enforced interaction. After watching Emily ineptly explain (lie) about why there is a man answering her hotel room phone, Jonah begins to notice little details about Emily. Emily begins to see Jonah as more than just a tall, attractive stranger but a man with a solidness about him; a good listener.

It’s a charming story. Emily and Jonah aren’t single because they have serious commitment issues but because they’ve never felt strong enough for someone to envision spending the rest of their lives with that other person. Because the two are relatively agnst free, the story contains a secondary romance and a suspense plot to fill out the length. The suspense plot was a little hokey but the jeopardy works to make both Emily and Jonah admit that the brevity of their acquaintance was no barrier to their love.

The secondary love story featuring Sadhu Ranjit whose nickname is the Indian Stallion for all the women who tend to drop their skirts when he’s in their presence and Emily’s friend Kirsten who is known for being rather weak willed when it comes to handsome men. Sadhu spends a little time with Kirsten and decides that he would like to get to know her better and refuses to sleep with Kirsten. It was amusing but very brief. I did notice that this was the second book in which a man of color played the leading role of a secondary romance in your Blaze books. I hope that we’ll get to see one of these guys play the main male protagonist.

I really enjoyed Emily and Jonah but it is a story that doesn’t have deep point of views but instead shines with good, sexy repartee, strong chemistry, and likeable characters. B-

Best regards

Jane

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While I haven’t read all of your books, I’ve read a great many of them and I think I can safely say that Vision in White is one of the funniest books you’ve penned in a long time. I thought Carter Maguire, the clumsy, blushing, tweed wearing, Yale educated, English lit teacher was adorable; and Mackenzie Elliott was a dynamo.

Vision in White is the first of four books featuring the best friend owners of Vows, a full service wedding event business. Parker inherited a mansion with a ballroom and together with Lauren, the cake decorator; Emma, the florist; and Mackenzie, the photographer, the four have created the place for weddings in Connecticut. Vision features the romance of Mackenzie and Carter.

This is a straight contemporary romance with nary a hint of serial killers or stalkers. The focus is straight on the burgeoning attraction between Carter and Mackenzie which is complicated by Mackenzie’s fear of commitment. Mackenzie had a shitty childhood. Her mother is an emotional vampire who is constantly laying on the guilt to get Mackenzie to support whatever bad habit her mother is into at the moment.

The funny mostly comes from scenes in which Carter is advised on dating by his friend Bob, the math teacher.   Carter has had a long crush on Mackenzie, since high school, and the idea of dating and then having sex with his crush, well, it makes even picking out flowers a challenge.

They were colorful, he thought with some resentment. They smelled nice. A couple of those big gerbera daisies were mixed in, and they struck him as a friendly flower. None of the dreaded roses, he mused, which, according to the Law of Bob, meant he’d basically be asking Mackensie to marry him and bear his children.   

So, they should be safe.   

Maybe they were too safe.

The kind-eyed cashier gave him a quick smile. "Aren’t those pretty! A surprise for your wife?"

"No. No. I don’t have a wife."

"Oh, for your girl then."

"Not exactly." He fumbled out his wallet as she rang them up. "Just a . . . Could I just ask you if you think these are appropriate for a date? I mean to give to the woman I’m taking out to dinner.”

"Sure they are. Most everybody likes flowers, don’t they? Especially us girls. She’s going to think you’re real sweet, and thoughtful, too."

"But not too . . ." Stop while you’re ahead, Carter told himself.

She took the money, made the change. "Here you go now." She slid the bouquet into a clear plastic bag. "You have a real good time tonight."

"Thank you." More relaxed, Carter walked back to his car. If you couldn’t trust the checker in the express line at the supermarket, who could you trust?

Another laugh out loud scene for me was when Carter was trying not to get advice from Bob after screwing up royally with Mackenzie

“You have two women after you. Two. Man, Carter, you’re a dog. You’re the big dog."

"For God’s sake, Bob, you’re completely missing the point."

"Not me, pal." The slack jaw had morphed into a grin of pure admiration. "The point is two hot chicks got it for you….” Bob’s eyes went bright with fantasy. "You’re the big, bad dog."

"I don’t want to be the dog." There was a reason he’d kept the incident to himself through the workday. But what madness had overtaken him to make him believe he could get reasonable advice out of Bob anywhere, anytime? "Try to stay with me on this, Bob.

"I’m trying, but I keep getting flashes of the girl fight. You know, with the rolling around on the floor and ripping each other’s clothes." Bob lifted his skinny cinnamon latte. "It’s pretty vivid."

The romance between Carter and Mackenzie unwraps slowly despite what seems like a compressed time space.   They ruminate; they spend time together; they rehash their dates with their friends.   It’s authentic, funny, and charming.   The parts of the story that lacked realism for me was the relationship Mackenzie had with her mother.   Early on in the story, Mackenzie receives a phone call from her mother asking for $3,000 to pay for a spa package, something Linda must have in order to recover from her latest breakup. Mackenzie forks it over with very little resistance and then berates herself for doing so.

I didn’t understand Mackenzie’s complicated dynamic with her mother at this point of the book (and really for most of it).   I could see maybe paying your mother’s rent or food or something, but a $3,000 spa package? It just seemed outrageous and I didn’t get why Mackenize so easily succumbed to her mother’s manipulations. I wish I had been provided greater insight regarding that.   It was an important issue and impediment to Mackenzie’s relationship with Carter but I felt it was the least fleshed out issue.

I loved the girl power relationship Mackenzie had with her three friends. I also appreciated that they fought and made up.   It wasn’t halcyonic storybook friendship, but real and authentic.   Again, it was Carter, blushing, sweet, earnest and hot Carter, and his hilarious conversations that made the story for me.

B-

Best regards,

Jane

This book can be purchased in mass market from an independent bookstore or ebook format from the Sony Store and other etailers.

When you offered us a chance to read your novel, the title gave me pause. “Oh dear,” I thought. This is going to be about some spoiled heiress who has to act silly and ends up falling for a poor hero all told against a backdrop of weddings. Which goes to show how deceptive a title can be. Delaney isn’t rich, Mike isn’t poor, they’re both in line to inherit some pretty nice goodies if they, and several other people, meet the terms of a will but yes, there are lots of weddings in the story.

Oh, the will. This would send Jane into orbit no matter if the plot says the hero (a lawyer) and the heroine (who checked with a lawyer) know it’s insane. How could the will as they know it be ironclad? Okay, I just ended up accepting then forgetting this part of the plot to get to the better stuff. The ultimate revelation about the terms of the will also helped me to swallow this. However, why does the villain pay no price for what was done? What they did is literally laughed off despite the time, trouble and expense it caused. I didn’t get this. But I did figure out, almost from the moment this person was first introduced to us, who dunnit.

Mike and Dan were horrible to Delaney when she was growing up. I wouldn’t blame her for wanting to kick both of them in the nuts. And they were certainly willing to play up the pathos and turn on the pressure to get her to come to Holiday Bay despite any other issues she might have had going on in her life. Does she ever learn that she’s the “Pumpkin Project?” I was pleasantly surprised that this didn’t turn out to be the straw that broke the camel’s back – for 10 pages of conflict at the end – before everyone comes to their senses.

I can’t count the number of books I’ve read which feature heroines who’ve loved and lusted after the hero from afar for years. And most of them annoy me to some degree. Usually the grown up heroine is supposed to now be intelligent, pretty, and poised. Yet when in the presence of the object of her long held affections, she suddenly turns into a klutz queen who alternates between tripping over her own feet and drooling over the still hunky hero. I was all set to watch Delaney do just this when something amazing happened. You showed how Delaney’s grown up and over her youthful fixation on Mike. Yeah, she still thinks he’s handsome but she can zing him. She also hasn’t spent the last 15 years secretly still pining for him. She’s had boyfriends and lovers. She’s been a modern American woman.

And then there was the perfect showdown over her childhood nickname of Pumpkin.

"All I know is it’s Thursday night," she said evenly. "And I’ve got an even bigger wedding to pull off this weekend than last."

"And all I know is if we want to get our inheritances, we can’t go around pissing each other off. So let me give you a piece of wisdom learned from my years in law. You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar."

An acid-laced retort leaped to the tip of her tongue, but before she could let loose with it, he was already standing.

"Now, Pumpy, let’s go finish the meeting because I’m sure everyone’s getting restless in there."

Pumpy? Pumpy? She’d had enough of being Pumpy. She’d had enough of trying to figure out why he’d never gotten past the fat redhead she used to be. Who did he think he was?

She stood and leveled a cold stare on him. "No, Mikey, I don’t think so. I don’t need your lectures, I don’t need your sympathy, I don’t need your rah-rah cheerleading." Suddenly, she realized, she wasn’t sure she even liked this adult Mike at all. Maybe she’d never liked who he was, just the image of who she wanted him to be. How could she even have thought herself attracted to him? "And I really don’t need to be Pumpy McBride anymore. Have you ever given any thought to what it felt like-’feels like-’to be called Pumpkin when you’re red-haired and fat?"

He stared at her.

"No. I didn’t think so." Oh, this felt good. "Frankly, I’ve had quite enough of tonight’s heirs’ meeting if you don’t mind." She took off down the sidewalk purposefully, covering long stretches of concrete with her strides, knowing that Mike was watching her go. Let him watch my back. Let him watch me walk right out of this town and out of his life. She tossed her hair dramatically.

Not that she was in his life anyway. And not that she could leave this town before the weddings were done and her inheritance secured. Her steps faltered and slowed. She felt as if she was in a movie and any minute the hero should chase her down the sidewalk and stop her, tell her how sorry he was and beg her to stay.

But at the end of the second block, she resigned herself to the fact that life just wasn’t that well scripted. And this town sure as hell was no movie set.

I read this scene and almost cheered. First because here’s a heroine who is strong enough to finally stand up for herself and secondly because at the end of it all, there’s that bit of realism to show it’s not an ending out of a movie script. It’s also the beginning of Mike seeing – and falling in love with – the woman Delaney is now.

MIKE STOOD IN THE doorway to the shop’s office and watched Delaney as the message played. Watched the soft light from the desk lamp highlight the golden strands in her red hair. He’d known from the moment he’d first heard her on the phone that Pumpkin McBride had grown up. But he’d never taken the time to consider the woman she’d become-’and what she had gone through to get there. Not when Dan proposed he romance Pumpkin to keep her in town. Not even when he reluctantly agreed to do it. And especially not minutes ago when he’d treated her like a wayward child in need of his expert guidance.

"Hey, Delaney?"

"Aren’t you supposed to be at the heirs’ meeting?" she asked.

"We adjourned early again. Seem to have a real problem finishing those meetings." He stepped into the room. "I just wanted to say I’m sorry. And if you don’t want my lectures or my sympathy or my cheerleading, much as it breaks my heart, I understand." He smiled sheepishly. "And, well, how about if I never call you Pumpkin again?"

She looked at him for what felt like a full minute. "That would be a start."

"And I’ll never give you advice again, unless you ask for it."

She just looked at him, her expression unreadable. "And you’ll never bring up vinegar and honey."

"Never."

"Or any derivative of Pumpkin."

"Or any derivative of Pumpkin," he said quietly.

She nodded and looked away.

"We never meant any harm. Not then. Not now. Pumpkin was mostly because of the red hair. Just like they called me 007 because my last name was Connery. And Dan was Hobes because his last name was Hobart. And Jack Turleton was Spike-’"

"Because of his grandstanding in the football games. Yeah, I know. I get it. All the guys had nicknames. All the guys and me, the fat redhead."

"No. Just the redhead. So what do you say, Delaney? Will you forgive me if I promise never to screw up again?"

In the subdued light, he saw the vulnerability in her expression and for just a second, the young girl whose heart had always been big enough to forgive the transgressions against her. And then the girl was gone. Delaney rolled her eyes and stuck out a hand. "Don’t get carried away. You’re a man. You’ll screw up again."

"What? Delaney, you cut me to the quick." He clasped her hand and she flashed him a quick grin.

The weddings Delaney has to arrange weren’t merely to poke fun at the industry. Sure some of the details these brides wanted for their special day could be eye rolling if viewed from the outside, yet in the end it’s what they wanted and Delaney does her best to accommodate their wishes. The tie in to one of my guilty pleasures – Bridezilla! – was au courant. What is it about weddings that turns otherwise sane women into raging maniacs? A career in dealing with these women, and their mothers, ::shudder:: no thank you!

Andy was another great surprise. She’s eleven years old, basically a good kid and her character isn’t played for laughs. The conflict between Mike and his daughter seem real and not manufactured for the plot. Andy’s reaching that stage where she’s beginning to spread her wings, test a bit more, get interested in boys and drive her father up the wall. Yet she retains some vulnerability. She’s also a shrewd bargainer when it comes to her assistance at Storybook Weddings. I can see her as a future high powered negotiator and definitely as the daughter of two lawyers.

So often the conflicts that drive a hero and heroine apart in the final chapters of the book feel manufactured and faux. Especially the ones that a good 10 minute talk would resolve. Not here, though. Mike’s desire to stay in his small hometown for the sake of his daughter vs Delaney’s need to ensure that she has a job to support her in case the inheritance doesn’t work out is real life. I also like that you have Delaney truly agonize over her choices instead of making a snap decision. This part faltered a little bit when Mike was immediately ready to think badly of Delaney for leaving early though he did redeem himself somewhat by thinking the thing through and realizing her reasons for what she felt she had to do.

One shouldn’t rely on preconceived notions about Harlequin book titles. If I’m honest, I might not have tried this book based on that and the blurb. I was expecting cutesy but I got a lot more. A strong heroine, a nice hero and two people who really see the other for who they are. B

~Jayne

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or Powells or ebook format.

This is the third in the Queen of Babble series featuring Lizzie Nichols, a wedding dress restorer and designer. I’ve read the first one but not the second (I have no explanation for not reading the second). The book begins with Lizzie confused about an encounter with her good friend, Chaz, and about the end of her relationship with French dreamboat, Jean Luc. (Is French dreamboat redundant?) Jean-Luc shows up unexpectedly in New York and brings with him a huge engagement ring and before she can say yes (or no), she finds herself engaged to Jean-Luc.

As Jean-Luc’s fiancée, though, certain things aren’t quite up to snuff like her Midwestern background and her dreams of a backyard wedding. Jean-Luc expects her to conform herself to fit in with his aristocratic family and then there is his reluctance to live in New York and his affinity for a job in Paris.

Lizzie doesn’t understand why everyone including Chaz and the maid of honor isn’t thrilled with her. She’s even taking flak at work from her co-workers (who kind of hired themselves) and her socialite client who is trying to procure a fabulous dress while possibly getting rid of the not so fabulous fiancée.

Lizzie is totally endearing in her cluelessness and her struggle to find herself and what she really wants out of life including who she wants to marry and what she wants to do as a career. I also think that few authors write the good guy character as well.

Maybe it’s a spoiler, but the hero is Chaz. Chaz is a man whose lover spurned him for another woman. Someone whose best look is casual-schlubby. Even as a good guy, though, I rooted for him over the uber sexy Frenchman Jean-Luc because he really was a bad boy. You made having someone there for you, to understand you, support you, and be your friend absolutely sexy.

The drawbacks of this book include the very youthful tone. Lizzie sounds and acts, many times, as a very young woman. It’s not a story with a lot of gravity even though at times there were serious subjects that were addressed. But for any Meg Cabot fan, I think this will please them. It did me. B

Best regards,

Jane

This book can be purchased in hardcover on June 24, 2008, from Amazon or Powells . Ebook format coming.

Long Time Coming is the first book in your trilogy about the Whitfields of New York. For the Whitfields, weddings and other celebrations are a family business. The book’s heroine, Tessa Whitfield, is an event planner and owner of Signature Bridals, the company through which she orchestrates dream weddings. Tessa’s sister, Simone, is a floral designer, and her cousin Faith is a baker who specializes in wedding cakes. The three have a warm personal and working relationship, although tension sometimes flares up between Faith and Simone, requiring Tessa to play the role of peacemaker.

As the book opens, Tessa arrives at her home and business (a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights) and finds a message from Bridget Sanborn on her answering machine. Bridget, a young bride, was to come by that evening for a wedding planning session, but can’t make it because she is on a sequestered jury. The problem is that it is now mid-October, and Bridge’s wedding is scheduled for New Year’s Eve. The meeting with Tessa was an important one, so Bridget sends her brother Micah in her stead.

Micah, an assistant DA and twenty-year veteran of the NYPD, arrives shortly after Tessa receives Bridget’s message. Micah and Tessa both like each other’s looks but before they have spent more than a few minutes in each other’s company, they are plunged into darkness. They quickly learn they are caught in blackout affecting much of New York City, and so, Tessa invites Micah to dine with her.

After dinner, they discuss Bridget’s wedding to her groom, Seth Cohen, and Tessa says she’ll need to see the location, which is the New Jersey home of Micah and Bridget’s parents. Micah offers to take Tessa there the following weekend, as well as to take her out to dinner to repay the nice dinner she had cooked for him, and Tessa agrees.

They join a neighborhood party, but when night falls and the lights have not returned, Tessa offers Micah her bed to sleep in. She comes in to check on him, sits on the bed and begins to tell him stories of past weddings, and before she knows it, she falls asleep. When she wakes the next morning to find herself alone, she realizes that Micah is a trustworthy man — he had every opportunity to take advantage but didn’t.

On Saturday, Micah takes Tessa to see his parents’ house where the wedding will be held and in the process she meets many members of Micah’s large and charming multicultural family. Later on, she also allows Micah to take her up to a house he owns in upstate New York, and while there, things start to get hot between them.

But Micah and Tessa have both been burned in the past, Tessa by a relationship with a man who turned out to be involved with another woman, and Micah in his early childhood, when his biological mother told him she loved him and then left four-year-old Micah in a hospital. Micah subsequently spent three years in foster care before being adopted by the Sanborns. Now Micah can’t bear to hear a woman say “I love you,” since it brings back memories of his abandonment, and he doesn’t stay in any romantic relationship longer than a year.

While Micah doesn’t tell Tessa all of this, he does explain early on that he’s not interested in marriage. Tessa gets the message and since she herself is deeply devoted to her time-consuming business, she suggests that the two of them be “friends with benefits.” Micah agrees, but almost from the first, part of him wants more. The same is true of Tessa. The two lose sleep from the intense desire and longing they feel when they are apart, and then try not to confess how much they each miss the other. But how long can they continue to do so?

Micah and Tessa are both likable and appealing characters. I especially like Tessa’s independence and her dedication to both her business and her family. Micah, too, was family oriented and hard working, so it was very easy to understand Micah and Tessa’s attraction to one another. I really felt their emotional connection, too.

The New York City setting is interesting as well. Outside of chick lit, I haven’t read many romances set in New York, and I do enjoy visiting the Big Apple in books, so it was nice to see the city and its surroundings depicted here. Tessa’s business of wedding organizing is also fun to read about.

Both Tessa and Micah have close and supportive families, and it is always nice to see familial warmth and support portrayed as a part of the hero and heroine’s lives.

Unfortunately, the book’s negative points outweigh it positive ones for me. My biggest problem is that Tessa and Micah, much as I liked them, seem nearly perfect and therefore for most of the book there didn’t seem to be anything major keeping them apart. Tessa’s involvement with the man in her past turns out to be nothing major, and though Micah’s issues are mentioned, they are not shown or explored in much depth for most of the book, so prior to the last few chapters they simply didn’t feel real to me. Ergo, nothing much compelled me to keep turning pages.

Also, the writing is awkward in places, both in the narration and in the dialogue, which at times feels stiff rather than flowing naturally the way conversation does.

Detailed descriptions are given of nearly every room the main characters enter, nearly every clothing outfit they wear, and most of the food they eat. While these descriptions are often quite nice (some of the food sounded mouthwatering), they don’t always seem relevant to the story, and I feel there are times when they disrupt it. For example, in the middle of an emotionally loaded encounter between Tessa and Micah’s mom, Rosalind, Tessa’s outfit and new hairdo are described in detail, and as I read, I felt it interrupted the emotion of the moment.

The last few chapters are the most emotionally charged, and my interest in the story was engaged to a greater degree there than earlier, but when Tessa and Micah are finally in conflict, neither one communicates all that well with the other. And soon after that, Micah’s commitment issues are resolved very quickly and easily, when his father gives him a new perspective. I wondered, if it was so easy, why his dad hadn’t done so years ago.

The storylines about Faith and Simone could probably have benefited from more page space. We are told that Simone’s on-again, off-again relationship with her ex-husband is bad for her more than we are shown it. Faith, meanwhile, seems like a nice enough woman but it’s hard to get a strong sense of her personality from her appearances in the story.

Many of the couples whose weddings Tessa had planned in the past are mentioned in the book by name, and I wondered if these were characters from previous books or not.

I also thought that the way the entire Whitfield family was in some way involved with weddings a bit unlikely. Not only was Tessa a wedding planner, Simone a floral designer, and Faith a wedding cake baker, but Tessa’s mother designed and sewed wedding gowns, and her father and uncle had owned a catering hall. It seemed a bit much at times, and I also had a little trouble suspending my disbelief that the wealthy clients who could afford Tessa’s services would purchase gowns from her mother’s small business, when she seemed to make only a few such gowns, rather than from a major big business designer like Vera Wang.

Long Time Coming has some strengths, but as mentioned above, for me these were outweighed by its weaknesses, especially by the absence of much conflict to keep me engrossed in the story. I could have easily put the book down and stopped reading it altogether. So, even though I appreciate the characters’ likeability and connection, my lack of engagement in the story leads me to give the book a C-.

~Janine

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or Powells or ebook format.

The man giving the toast, I think, is the best man. Amy and Brad (both actors) are sitting together.

Via Angela James.

Thank you for that hilarious trip down memory lane. I’m a born and bred Southerner and have attended Dixie weddings my whole life (starting when I was a darling four year old flower girl and got to wear my first long dress – yellow silk with lace trim- and sashay down the aisle. I decided I wanted to keep some of those lovely smelling rose petals for myself so I stopped dropping them at the between the pews and the alter!). This book brought to mind a lot of them. Well, maybe not so much the entire wedding parties getting smashing drunk as most of us in my family are Methodists and we don’t do that. At least we don’t do that when the receptions are held at the Church. But I did hear tell of one wedding rehearsal that got a bit out of control thanks to some bottles of Wild Turkey that required all the groomsmen and most of the bridesmaids to wear sun glasses on The Big Day to keep from crawling off into the church shrubbery. Hmmm, I must not have gone to enough Social Baptist weddings.

I remember my aunts setting up white taffeta covered tables in their homes to proudly display all the loot my older cousins were given, the dyed-to-match-the-bridesmaid-dresses mints, the lime sherbet punch, getting to be a cake cutter at another cousin’s wedding, my mother’s reminiscences about the older ladies in her hometown hounding her mother to get her married (“If she doesn’t get married soon she’s going to be an Old Maid!” This when my mother was (gasp) 25 and still unmarried). We haven’t had any shotgun weddings, though. Or at least not lately. But lots of your wonderful wedding food recipes are dishes I have eaten at many a reception and I grew up being hounded to “write those thank you notes!” I also recall the nightly spraying for mosquitoes while living in Memphis. Who cared that we were turning ourselves into mutants, at least we weren’t bitten all damn day long. ;)

Anyone who wants to throw the perfect last Dixie wedding, or just laugh a lot while reading how to do it, should check out “The Official Southern Ladies’ Guide to Hosting the Perfect Wedding.” B

~Jayne